Republican Voter Suppression Efforts in Georgia

By Tony Owens ‘24

The Georgia State Legislature recently passed Senate Bill 202, which significantly changes the way the state conducts its elections. The bill was met with swift legal challenges from organizations such as the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU. Several provisions of the bill seek to make it harder for some Georgians to exercise their constitutional right to vote. The aforementioned groups are criticizing the bill, calling it an attack on the civil rights of Georgia voters. This bill appears to be a Republican effort to prevent retain power, likely a reaction to their poor performances in elections in Georgia over the past year.

In November 2020, Georgia voters chose Joe Biden as their preferred candidate for President of the United States. A few months later, Georgia voters chose Rev. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff as their Senators in the 117th Congress. This came as a shock to many voters given the state’s recent history as a GOP stronghold. Georgia has supported Republicans on the presidential level since 1992, as well as elected exclusively Republicans on the senate level since 2005 after the end of Democrat Zell Miller’s only Senate term. Nevertheless, voters were loud and clear with their message at the ballot box, and now the Georgia’s Republican State Legislature seeks to curtail voters’ ability to send a similar message in 2022 and onward.

If you ask many Georgia Republicans for the reasoning behind the bill, you will likely be met with an answer similar to that of Georgia governor Brian Kemp. Weeks before signing the bill, Kemp explained, “Significant reforms to our state elections were needed. There’s no doubt there were many alarming issues with how the election was handled, and those problems, understandably, led to a crisis of confidence in the ballot box here in Georgia.” Kemp argued that the bill was an attempt to address substantial problems with Georgia elections, a clear reference to the many allegations of widespread voter fraud, specifically regarding absentee ballots, in the 2020 election by former President Trump and many of his supporters. Kemp’s claims would lead one to believe that there should be clear evidence of issues that needed fixing within the state’s elections. This, however, is at odds with the failure of multiple reviews of the state’s election to produce evidence supporting the existence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia. 

After losing one of the closest American elections in recent memory there was bound to be a series of audits to ensure that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. First, Georgia law dictated that since the margin of victory was under 0.5%--49.5% for Biden to 49.3% for Trump--any candidate could request a recount, provided that the request was made no later than two days after the vote was certified. The manual audit looked at all votes cast during the election and found no evidence of widespread fraud or errors. In fact, the audit only managed to shift the results by a mere 496 votes in favor of Trump in an election that saw over 5 million votes cast. Continuing appeals led to a December audit of more than 15,000 voter signatures, which prompted the office of the Georgia Secretary of State to announce that “no fraudulent absentee ballots were identified during the audit.” Despite numerous efforts to prove otherwise, multiple audits of the 2020 Presidential election found no evidence supporting the claims of widespread voter fraud. 

If not for the purpose of protecting the state’s elections, why would Georgia Republicans seek to pass this bill? The answer lies in the reason for the victories of Biden, Warnock, and Ossoff in Georgia. All of these Democratic candidates won due to their ability to drive turnout. President Biden won Georgia after turnout “jumped to more than 67 percent of eligible voters, breaking the state’s 40-year record of 63 percent, set in 2008.” Democrats were able to sustain this boost in turnout in 2021 as well. Turnout in the Senate runoff elections saw a drop of only 9% from that of the 2020 Georgia Senate elections. This might not seem impressive at face value, but when considering the over 40% drop seen in 2008 from the Georgia general election to the Senate runoff election, this significance is crystal clear. Republicans saw this turnout increase and looked to prevent it from happening ever again. 

President Biden was quick to condemn the new Georgia legislation. When asked by reporters, the President blasted the Georgia bill, labeling it an “atrocity.” Biden appeared especially disgusted by language in the bill that appears to make it illegal to provide food and/or water to voters waiting in lines, with the President stating, “You can't provide water for people about to vote? Give me a break.” Biden later suggested that the DOJ will look into the bill after going so far as to call it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.” The President is not alone in this belief as many critics claimed the bill was an effort to disenfranchise Black voters. Nearly 3 in 10 Black Georgia voters, the highest amongst all racial groups in the state, elected to vote by mail in the 2020 General election. This is a key reason behind Black voters increasing from 23% of the electorate to 31% from the 2016 to 2020 Presidential elections. Bear in mind, Black voters voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, with exit polls showing 88% of Black Georgia voters casting their vote for President Biden. Senate Bill 202 both cuts the time allotted to request a mail in absentee ballot by over 50%--from 180 days to 7 weeks--and moves the deadline to complete the application from the Friday before the election to two Fridays prior to election day. For example, if there was an election Tuesday, March 31st, the previous deadline would have been Friday, March 28th, whereas the new deadline would be Friday, March 21st. 

Many have also taken issue with the new rules surrounding drop boxes for absentee ballots. For many voters, drop boxes represented a convenient and safe way to vote during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they were able to cast a ballot without having to wait in a line and potentially expose themselves to the virus. This was especially helpful in highly populated areas, where lines can result in hours of waiting on election day. SB 202 limits the use of drop boxes to exclude the final four days before the election. Some argue this is “when drop boxes become particularly useful because of potential postage delays that could cause the ballot to arrive late to elections offices.” The bill, however, limits drop box use to the smaller of, “one per 100,000 registered voters or one per voting location.” This means Fulton County’s population of around 800,000 registered voters would be allowed a maximum of 8 drop boxes, should the population remain relatively similar. This change disproportionately affects the most highly populated counties in the state, many of which hold a large share of the state’s population of Black voters. Nearly 800,000 of the 2.2 million--meaning more than 1 in 3--active Black voters in Georgia reside in Fulton, Gwinnett and Dekalb counties. These are the first, second, and fourth most populated counties in the state respectively, and will face the brunt of the impact from SB 202.

It is clear from these proposed changes that Republicans in Georgia do not believe they can win by creating excitement and turnout. Now, under the veil of election security, Georgia Republicans are going out of their way to make it harder for Georgians to exercise their right to vote. If these politicians believed they could win by convincing voters to choose their party, they would instead attempt to make it easier for voters to participate in the state’s elections. The fact is, we are seeing the exact opposite take place. In 2020 and 2021, Georgia voters demanded change, electing Democrats to both Senate seats and voting for Joe Biden for President, but now many of these same voters will have a harder time making their voices heard. This is a deliberate attempt to put obstacles in the way of them casting their ballots. One cannot understate the importance of taking a stand against this targeted legislation to ensure that every Georgia voter is able to exercise their rights with no unnecessary burdens placed upon them.